SFO habitue gets probation and treatment

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Marilyn Hartman, the 62-year-old woman busted three times for trying to sneak onto a plane at San Francisco International Airport — and arrested three times for hanging around the airport — was sentenced Friday to probation and referred to a treatment facility after being diagnosed with major depressive order, a prosecutor said.

Hartman was referred to Redwood House, a facility where she can be treated for her mental illness, said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. He acknowledged that the treatment center “is not a locked facility. Thus, she could walk away.”

Hartman pleaded no contest last month to trespassing and violation of a court order barring her from SFO, both misdemeanors, in connection with an incident March 26 in which authorities found her sitting in baggage claim in Terminal 3.

Prosecutors agreed to dismiss charges filed against her in an incident April 7 in which she was found sitting in the food court in the international terminal, authorities said.

In that and two other incidents, police determined that she hadn’t tried to board a flight or get through a security checkpoint. But Hartman was in violation of a court order barring her from being at the airport unless she was lawfully ticketed to fly, authorities said.

Hartman first came to the attention of authorities on Feb. 15, when she somehow got through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint and found her way onto an airplane bound for Hawaii. But she was caught “when the actual seat holder arrived,” Wagstaffe said.

Three days later, Hartman returned to SFO but was caught at the security gate. On her third attempt, on Feb. 20, she had a discarded boarding pass in her possession, Wagstaffe said.

During the first two attempts to get through, she was interviewed and told to leave the airport. But she was arrested the third time. She has claimed that she has cancer and wanted to go somewhere warm, Wagstaffe said. She has also told police that she feels safer at the airport instead of at her home in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, he said.